Weekend Iyengar Workshop Review with Sabine Kühner.

This past weekend, Yogacentralen gratefully hosted and welcomed Sabine Kühner for her first Iyengar workshop in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Sabine’s weekend workshop invited students to find their limits and to then safely and intelligently expand their boundaries. She expertly led the all-levels class through invigorating standing postures, rigorously cleansing twists and forward bends, heart-opening back bends and inversions. She then closed the workshop with a two-hour pranayama and restorative session.

Sabine encouraged students to become aware of their own bodies and to not compare themselves to others. ‘We have to always observe our own self because every body is different.’ She also reminded students that there are times that we need to unlearn our physical habits. ‘The body wants to do what is easy – sometimes you have to teach it to do the opposite of what it wants to do even if it is uncomfortable at first.’

She also mentioned that we should not avoid tending to our injuries, but instead, learn to intelligently and safely work with them. ‘If we have an injury or if something hurts during asana, we tend to want to avoid these asanas, and if we continue to avoid and not work within these areas, our bodies will compensate, we can then develop other injuries and when we are much older, we may not be able to move at all.’

Sabine skilfully brought a powerful and personal yoga practice to every single mat. Every student, no matter where they were in their practice or what difficulty or injury they may have had, felt her attention and benefitted from her masterful alignment.

After the workshop the yoga studio offered a viewing of ‘A Leap of Faith’, a documentary film about BKS Iyengar. After seeing the film I really felt that Sabine truly integrated the essence of her guru into her teaching. She instilled courage into every student, taught with compassion and a sense of humour and was nurturing and kind. The workshop was challenging, fun and extremely transformational and therapeutic.

Sabine is a certified Iyengar Yoga teacher with over 20 years of teaching experience. She has studied with BKS Iyengar and his daughter Geetaji and son Prashant. For more info about Sabine, visit her website.

For more information about Yogacentralen, click here.